


Existentialism on Laundry Night

by blue_like_barnes



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:35:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27422089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_like_barnes/pseuds/blue_like_barnes
Summary: It's the small moments. The mundane ones. The midnight hours at a laundromat - that show you what you truly have.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Sam Wilson, Steve Rogers & Reader, Steve Rogers/Reader
Kudos: 28





	Existentialism on Laundry Night

He pulls off the exit inside St. Tammany Parish just north of midnight, onto a two lane road dotted in wire candy canes that hang off the posts of the streetlights, twinkling red and white against the dark.

You’d mapped the laundromat a mile down, 24 hours and graciously flanked by a service station that could say the same. He pulls into the gravelled drive as you scrabble for wayward pieces of clothing tucked into the spaces behind him. 

You unearth the last as he scans through the windows of the glass fronted business. The left half of his favorite pair of thick wool socks, hidden beneath a book he’d only thumbed through before losing interest.

“Just us,” he confirms, as you let out a triumphant  _ aha _ at the discovery and push your way to the front of the van again.

“Nice-” you breathe, shoving the door open without preamble and dragging a gills stuffed mesh bag out behind you.

“Hey, wait-” Steve laughs at your gusto, the way you have to pull the brakes on your momentum just to spin around and look at him again, “I’m filling up and parking at the station. You want anything?”

“Sugar,” you answer, bumping the door closed and backing toward the building. In a sweeping motion, you swing the bag up and over your shoulder, “don’t forget to grab the blankets.” 

You’re inside before he pulls away.

He settles at the pump closest to the street. Fills up as he watches you stretch through the windows across the road, arms over your head, face tilted up toward the ceiling.

It was a long stint for you to be overjoyed by the prospect of laundry, and Steve swears even he’s started to feel the strain of the road in his pair of genetically engineered super knees.

Another embraceable reminder of the humanness he’s acquired since leaving Captain behind.

He basks in the anonymity afforded to him now. The way he can navigate public spaces in nothing but plaid loungers and a thin blue thermal, behind beardscruff and hair that’s grown dark and long over his eyes and not be given more than a passing glance by other strangers who move through the night. 

He makes his purchases with no conversation past friendly greeting, two foam cups and a pack of Starburst he can filch the cherry from, grabs two sets of pillows and blankets from inside the van, and manages to juggle them all as he jogs across that quiet road back to you.

The laundromat’s warm- sunny yellows and sleek metal, soap scented and bathed in the ambient hum of machinery coupled with soft crackling of an overhead speaker tuned to a local radio station.

Steve one arms the pile of fleece into the machine next to the already spinning clothes, repositioning his hold on the drinks as you toss in detergent and slot the money to get it going. He thrusts yours out, right hip popped forward to indicate the candy shoved into his pocket. You take them both, a cautious stare as your fingers close around the cup.

“Hot chocolate,” he placates, watching your frown fade with a smugly quirked eyebrow that says,  _ C’mon. I know you. _

Because he does.

Well enough to have anticipated that face you’d make at the prospect of the unsweetened dark roast in his own cup. To have already laughed to himself about it as he filled it up across the street.

He’s gleaned a lot in the months you’ve worked together. Acquired the keen level of intimacy one only does in shared bedrooms and battle spaces. In the cobbled together partnership that had been the brainchild of his Captain.

Turns out Steve could let go of the mantle easily. Could pass it along to the more measured and worthy carrier. But at the end of the day, he was still that Brooklyn kid who never learned how to walk away from a fight.

He’d belted only a half year’s worth of retirement before he wanted work again. To be out in the field. To make a difference.

“Mm. Color me shocked,” Bucky’d told him upon that revelation, shoveling forkfuls of blueberry streusel pancakes into his mouth as they’d sat together in Sam’s kitchen, unmoved by the inevitability he’d already seen coming, “Don’t know why you can’t just enjoy what you’ve earned.” 

The latter had watched him, chin in hand, brown eyes contemplative. His successor and soulmate, if not in the conventional sense, Sam Wilson had learned to read Steve in ways even his oldest friend hadn’t managed. 

After a long moment and a longer look, he’d stood up from the table, shook his head at Steve and sighed, “There’s someone I can call.”

-

_ Someone _ downs hot chocolate across from Steve now, pajama clad and propped against the line of machines. 

He stretches out into one of the hard yellow bucket seats against the wall and regards you there.

Takes out the Moleskine he’d shoved into his waistband earlier, removes the pen indented into the center and with a loose hand begins to map you there. The curve of your stance, the arch of your brow. Layered sweater dotted all in stars. 

It was a first, clothing spent to the point of pajama clad laundry day. But they were only freshly removed from an exhaustive job and an evasive target, left with a van reeking with the distinct pungence of sweat and dirt. The ferrous tang of blood. It was an acrid scent he was more than happy to be rid of before the long trek back to New York for an extended stay.

“Don’t draw me ugly.” 

You break him from his rhythm, crossing the distance to toss your cup and take up the space by his side.

He only pauses long enough to give you a critical look. A half slanted frown and a murmured, “ _ Please _ ,” before resuming those loose strokes, moving to the tile that spans the floor, softening out its rigid pattern with an easy, unbearing hand as you watch along with interest. The scratch of pen tip to paper is hypnotically soothing, a calming, hazy lull only broken when, after several minutes, your head knocks unexpectedly into his shoulder.

You right yourself quickly and he laughs.

“‘M not sleeping,” you protest.

Laundry progresses with little fanfare. 

Steve puts away his sketchbook. Convinces a game of trivia out of you, sourced from the app he’s become woefully addicted to in the downtime between missions. _Your_ _fault_ , he says. And he’d quietly play it alone if not for his own phone sitting dead and drained in the van. So you indulge him, even if you do grousingly poke at his know it all hubris when he beats you by the shape of a water oak leaf.

When the cycles end on the wash, you swap them over together. You run through your series of cat like stretches again before taking up residence on a new and longer run of yellow seats, resting your feet unceremoniously onto his thighs. 

He’s unbothered. Content to close his eyes and listen to the radio crackling over the rumble of the dryers. He knows the song. The one that plays after. Something Christmas. He drums his fingers along with them all and basks in the sounds punctuated by your occasional commentary.

“Bucky’s mad you haven’t answered his texts.”

“Mm?”

“Told him he was dead to you.”

“What’d he say?”

“Not for the first time.”

“I...o _ uch _ -”

He’s entertained by the maniacal giggle you loose as you hold your phone above your face and type away.

He loves the bond you’ve forged with Bucky. Yet to meet face to face, but you don’t have to, you say, to find kinship in the persistent attempt to wrangle two of the most stupendously reckless and chaotically good men on earth.

He hangs on to that last bit. Goodness feels quantitative when spoken by you.

“Are you dancing?” You ask a while later, when his hands have yet to still.

He says, “Never.”

“Oh yeah?” Your feet slide away onto the floor, and you right yourself into a seated position, “what’s this then?”

He watches as you bob your head back and forth, shift your shoulders to match in time. 

He laughs again, he hadn’t realized he was doing it, “A very awkward appreciation for music,” he says. And the moment. The contentedness. The night.

“Ah. Thought you were gonna show me those moves finally-”

“No no,” he says, “No moves.”

You’d had that conversation before. 

Holed into the corner of a club in Phoenix, on the tail of some grifter hocking alien intelligence. Everything was newer then, tipped in uncertainty and discomfort he hasn’t known for a while.

“Come on Steve,” you’d told him, “you have to at least  _ act _ like you want to be here.”

“I’m not dancing,” he’d said, “I can’t. I won’t.”

“Not like a Captain to say can’t-”

“Well there are no Captains here, are there? Only Steve.”

“Okay,” you’d smiled, “ _only_ _Steve_.”

You had danced though. Keen and attentive, but open and freewheeling and unencumbered by those somethings that always seemed to hold him back. He’d thought of that vote from Sam upon initial arrangement that you’d be unquestionably good for him.

He’d sketched out those lithe movements by memory that night. Bucked up a different kind of courage that didn’t come as easy and showed you, and you’d smiled and looked at him with an air of pleasant surprise.

“Really cool,” you’d told him, and it had felt good in a way that was indescribable. 

Didn’t mean he was ever gonna dance, though.

-

The timers on the dryers sound simultaneously, and you pop up from your seat with a muted  _ yay _ , pulling him away from the memory. 

Few joys in life are on par with freshly washed clothing straight from the dryer, and he takes a moment to bask in that warmth before pulling them all out and spreading them onto the folding tables lined up along the back stretch of the building.

It’s an unceremonious thing, done without fanfare, folding together side by side. He’s far past the embarrassment of inconsequential things like mingled intimates. He grabs whatever’s closest and handles it all the same. He folds shirts into crisp squares with sharp lines that he takes secret pride in. Or maybe not so secret, because he has you laughing as he packs them all away back into that mesh bag with overexaggerated care.

“Did Captain America ever wash his tac suit at the laundromat?”

“Hosed if off at a carwash in Dallas once, if you can believe it.”

You remove the blankets last. Wrap your own around your shoulders and tuck your pillow beneath your chin and take an overstated breath. You practically skip your way to the door, and with a final check, Steve does the same, bag in tow, stepping out from that warm and cheery little pocket of moment back into the frigid night air.

He’d once pictured himself somewhere else. 

Some  _ time _ else. 

Had hugged Bucky smart and vanished toward a mission he thought would culminate in the realization of his romanticized past.

But he’d seen those faces. The little ones. The cherubic replications of the woman he’d held close to his chest, and he’d returned to the world he was meant for with a healthier dose of reality and a chafing sense of shame. 

Sam had been bewildered by Bucky’s surprise. Had followed along confusedly as he’d said, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see you buddy, but this wasn’t exactly the plan.”

“The plan?” He’d asked. 

“New plan,” Steve had answered.

“What plan?”

“Care to share why?”

“Care to share  _ anything _ ?”

Steve had looked at them both, a little broken and void of usual preamble, “Wasn’t my home,” he’d said. He’d flashed the newly retrieved shield and landed a hand onto Sam’s shoulder, “You and I should talk.”

To all his credit and not a bit of surprise, Sam had offered zero grudge toward the secrecy, merely the support and understanding and insight he always did.

“What  _ is _ your home?” He’d asked him, wielding a shield he wasn’t so sure would fit his hand, “What is home to you, Steve?”

Steve had yet to confront it. Had made that statement organically, and meant it still. The question was posed as both curiosity and challenge, one he knew he needed, but cut deep at the same time when he’d turned up empty, “I don’t know the answer to that.”

Sam had boomeranged the shield back into his hold. Meant for his hand, like Steve had always known. He’d turned back to him and nodded with a melancholic smile, “Keep me posted.”

-

You win the fight to drive.

It isn’t really a fight. He doesn’t mind the idea of a break, to sort those glimmers of clarity that have eked their way into his thoughts. He pushes his seat back and stretches his legs out. He plugs in his phone and waits for it to power up with just the tiniest bit of life.

“No sleep til Brooklyn?” You ask, keying life into the engine and cranking up the heat to thaw the frost that’s crept across the windshield in your absence.

He smiles, “Beastie Boys…” like his life in the in between is one giant game of name that reference.

It’s an ungodly hour, but the timestamp on the messages he’s missed from Bucky reassure him enough to scroll down to Sam’s name. To open their thread of communication as you leave the station and ease back onto the interstate. 

Time feels luminous. Scented in dryer sheets and molten, plasticky heat. Full of that inexplicable something. 

He types out the message with those same bits of different courage that you were first to inspire.

**Found that answer for you.**

He hits send. Takes a breath and types another. 

**It’s here…**

His finger hovers over the backspace.

**It’s her**

Neither feel right or enough to convey the feeling that has steadily bloomed inside his chest. That has been fostered and cared for and lovingly grown for months into these bits of realization. He erases the words entirely as three wavering dots appear on Sam’s end of the line. Confusion?

**That answer never was for me, pal.**

Steve should have known better. Another bubble blooms and follows.

**Proud of you.**

It’s a strange sentiment. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just right. And he’s grateful for the finality Sam’s offered him through it. The opportunity to leave it at that. To leave it there.

He does.

He shuts his screen off and turns to you. Watches as you focus on the road ahead, vented heat blowing through your hair. He’ll frame the movement in his mind, pen it down later.

“You gonna get out whatever it is you’re trying to say over there?”

You’re teasing, but it feels closer to home than before.

“You ever seen a New York Christmas?” He asks after a long moment.

Your mouth slants into a frown, “Does Home Alone count?” And though your eyes remain on the road, he can tell they light with intrigue. He knows exactly where to reach to pull all that curiosity and interest out. 

He  _ knows _ you. 

“No,” he grins, leaning back against the headrest, “It’s something you have to experience for yourself.”


End file.
